Coin de Rue - Street Corner by Pierre Bonnard, 1867-1947

Pierre Bonnard, 1867-1947
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Coin de Rue - Street Corner

Original lithograph in four colours. 1898/99. from the edition (possibly never completed) of 100 impressions. Issued as No. 2 in the series: Quelgues Aspects de la Vie de Paris - Some Aspects of Parisian life. Published by Ambroise Vollard, Paris 1899. Printed at the studio of Clot, 1898/99.
Ref: Roger-Marx 58; Bouvet - Bonnard The Graphic Work, No. 60.

Beautiful impression with unfaded soft delicate colours. On pale cream light wove paper, as issued. Generally excellent condition; the faintest trace of time discolouration at the extreme out sheet edges. Full margins. Sheet: 16?x20ž?. Image overall: 10 5/8?x13ž? (270x350mm).

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This study of hurrying figures at an early morning Paris street corner, the scene bathed in misty sunlight is typical of the wonderful patterns of colour and shape which are the visual language of the superlative group of colour lithographs in Bonnard?s series: Aspects of Parisian life - Quelgues Aspects de la Vie de Paris. Completed in 1899 the sequence includes some of the greatest masterpieces of the art of the colour lithograph at the end of the nineteenth century.

Such works as Coin de Rue mark the apogee of Bonnard?s Nabis period. The quirky forms, so much more expressive of movement and character than actual shape, the way that the colour tones - transparent yellows and green, touches of brown and ochre - are used not so much to give the sensation of the visual appearance of the scene but rather of its atmosphere, and the extraordinarily inventive treatment of the pictorial space, with its fascinating distortions of perspective and viewpoint, express the whole essence of the Nabis painters? desire to make this work not so much a visual as an emotional interpretation.

The 12 lithographs in the Quelques Aspects series, including the Coin de Rue above, were commissioned by Ambroise Vollard in 1898. At that point Bonnard was totally absorbed by the medium of lithography and inspired by his experiments with drawing and colour whilst working at Clot?s lithography studio. Such was his involvement with each lithograph that he would frequently experiment with colour variations in the course of an edition. Thus his prints of this period need to be seen more as individual works of art than as impressions in a conventional edition. The colours in this impression are fine, delicate and translucent using the pale creamy surface of the paper to give warmth and tone.